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Deep Dark Secrets
from the CIA past implicate both
Cheney and Rumsfeld in murder

Mid-East
Realities - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - 23 June 2004:
It's hard to know what to belief these days. This particular story,
now resurfacing in view of recent history, has much past history behind
it and is quitely likely to be accurate. Even more important at this
point is the realization that those now in control of the American
government have been indeed masters of deceit, cover-up, and death for
a very long time now. They've occassionally been exposed by
investigative journalists and they've survived many close-call
scandals. But so far they've always managed to slinker on enabling
them to be the primary perpetrators and cover-up specialists to what
has been happening both in the Middle East as well as on the homefront
since they retook power in Washington, this time at the very top, in
2001.

US VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY AND SECRETARY OF DEFENCE DONALD RUMSFELD LINKED TO
"MURDER OF CIA SCIENTIST"

by Gordon Thomas*

Secret documents have revealed US Vice President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld are "linked to the murder" of a
senior CIA scientist. Frank Olson, who was a key member of the CIA's
secret brainwashing
programme MK-ULTRA, was sent plunging from a New York hotel window
after he had threatened to reveal the CIA involvement in "terminal
experiments" in post-war Germany.

The importance of the documents are not only their historic
significance. They could play an important role in the race for the
White House this November. Ironically it falls due on the 51st
anniversary of Olson's murder.

Frank Olson's son, Eric, a psychologist, believes that fact will not
be overlooked by President Bush's opponents as they search for further
evidence that Rumsfeld and Cheney have a long history of news
management and hiding the truth that could be highly embarrassing to
the White House.

The documents reinforce how Rumsfeld and Cheney have honed their
skills over the past thirty years to ensure that today they have so far
managed to keep the current scandal of US torture in Iraq - and
elsewhere - from ensnaring themselves and President Bush.

For almost half a century Eric Olson has insisted his father was murdered "on orders from the highest level".

Frank Olson's work for the CIA had included making biological weapons.
He had devised an aerosol disguised as insect spray that contained the
lethal pathogen, botulism. It was successfully used to kill a Russian
GRU military intelligence officer on a visit to Gdansk, Poland, in
1951.

Another creation had been toothpaste containing salmonella, an
incapacitating bacterium. The CIA arranged for it to be distributed in
1952 to Bulgarian troops in Sofia.

Yet another weapon was inserted into Polish produced jam, the shigella
bacterium, which produced incapacitating diarrhoea. For a time it
produced a major outbreak among Polish and other Warsaw Pact frontline
troops in 1952.
All these, and more, Frank Olson had produced in his laboratory at
Fort Detrick, near Washington DC. It was America's chemical-biological
warfare complex. Since 1943, Olson had worked there.

To ensure his weapons worked, they were tried out on what the CIA
classified as "expendables": suspected double agents, captured spies
and others held in detention camps in the American Zone in southern
Germany.

This was the 1950s when the Cold War was at its height. But Olson had
never witnessed the result of his work. Then in the summer of 1953, he
visited a CIA "safe house" near Stuttgart. He saw men dying, often in
agony, from the weapons he had made. He was shocked, and protested. By
the time he had returned to Fort Detrick in November of that year, his
fate had been sealed. CIA director Allan Welsh Dulles decided that
Olson was a dangerous whistleblower.

Eric Olson had always maintained "my father was murdered on the
highest authority". He has fought a long battle to prove his point. But
at every step he was blocked by two of the most powerful men in
Washington - Cheney and Rumsfeld.

But the documents which have surfaced in Washington all too clearly
pinpoint the role the two men played in covering-up the murder of Frank
Olson.
In a "Flash Secret" memo from Cheney to Rumsfeld, the future Vice
President warns if the truth emerged "it might be necessary to disclose
highly classified national security information".

Another memorandum to the President (Gerald Ford) reveals that Eric
Olson and his family "have indicated their shock and outrage at the
circumstances surrounding Dr Olson's death". The memo suggests "the
President expresses his own outrage" over the death.

Cheney warns in a further memo that Olson's job "is so sensitive that
it is highly unlikely we would submit relevant evidence on the issue of
his duties".

The 23 pages of documents paint a clear picture of the determination
of Cheney and Rumsfeld to keep secret Olson's work and to ensure, as a
matter of public policy, it must remain secret that "a drug criminally
given him (Olson) cannot as a matter of law be determined he died in
the course of his official duties".

"The documents remind us why blind trust in any government official or
agency is a bad idea. The cover-up of torture in Iraq today has its
roots in a different time - but it's the same culture of cover-up. That
cover-up ultimately led to the murder of my father", said Eric Olson.

"After witnessing experiments on prisoners held in secret CIA "safe
houses" in Germany, my father was so shocked he was seen as a
whistleblower by his superiors. They arranged for him to receive a
mind-blowing cocktail of LSD and other drugs. Then a CIA field
operative pushed my father out of a hotel window in New York. The CIA
said my father had committed suicide due to 'personal reasons'. Both
Cheney and Rumsfeld continued to conceal the truth - even after 2003,
when President Bush renounced the use of torture and abuse by the CIA",
continued Eric.

A California history professor, Kathryn Olmstead discovered the documents in the Gerald Ford library.

Cheney and Rumsfeld were given the task of covering up the details of
Frank Olson's death. At the time, Rumsfeld was White House Chief of
Staff to President Gerald Ford. Dick Cheney was a senior White House
assistant to the President.

Frank
Olson's family received US $750,000 to settle their claims against the
US government in 1976. But the cover-up continued.

Both the offices of Rumsfeld and Cheney have declined comment on their role in covering-up the murder of Frank Olson.

But from his home outside Washington, Eric Olson said the documents
involving Rumsfeld and Cheney show they "have questions to answer".

* Gordon Thomas is a senior
Irish journalist well-known for his long connections to intelligence
source and information. Among his many books are: * Gideon's Spies_The Secret History of Mossad * Robert Maxwell - Israel's Superspy * Seeds of Fire - China and the Story Behind the Attack on America

June 2004

U.S. Ordered Brits to Attack Iran - Brits Balked (June 30, 2004)
The order was given in secret by the U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, who was already scheduled to be replaced, quite likely because of his involvement in the horrendous Iraqi torture scandal. But anyone who thinks General Sanchez gave the order without checking first with his neocon bosses back at the Pentagon -- Wolfowitz and Feith, who then of course check with Rumsfeld who then tells the President, Condi, and Colin -- just doesn't understand even at this late date how the invasion/occupation of Iraq came about nor how the Pentagon planning has been progressing for Iran, Syria, North Korea, just as soon as the excuses can be managed.

Bush and U.S. Exposed - book by book by book (June 30, 2004)
This list of books exposing the Bush presidency for what it really is all about is an essential corrective to all the propaganda and TV clips constantly bombarding the American people... In many ways though some of these books are more significant, however in a TV/Movie age even collectively they will not have the same impact though they do help set a climate for skepticism and anxiety. This particular list was compiled a few months ago by USA Today so it's hardly complete at this point. But it is a good starting place for those wanting to choose a little holiday reading, however depressive, sometimes shocking, surely politically and historically depressing.

Bremer Slinks Away; CIA Slinks Forward (June 28, 2004)
Thus now Bremer hastily and rather shamefully
slinks away without much fanfare, a few days
early so they say, even as Iraq continues to
seeth in hatred and a slow-simmer civil war.

Baghdad Shuffle (June 28, 2004)
It's historic alright. A huge historic bungle that is quite literally exploding in their faces as they try to appear to go but actually stay with their carefully chosen Iraqi faces now out front. Over the weekend on ABC News one of the neocon political commentators made a little mistake and clearly called the American-appointed 'interim Iraqi Prime Minister' a "CIA agent" -- it was a rare moment of candor in public in today's confused, uptight, and secretive Washington.

Kurds on 'the return' - Palestinians into ghettos (June 27, 2004)
Substitute "Palestinians" for Kurds, and "Israelis" for Arabs, and there is a whole different twist to 'the return' of the Kurds featured in this front-page New York Times article last Sunday. Another great irony of our times is that even as the Americans and the Israelis help facilitate what the Kurds are doing in Iraq they demand the Palestinians give up their 'right of return' even though it is enshrined in many U.N. Security Council resolutions going back to 1947...

Worst Crisis Since WWII? (June 26, 2004)
"the most foolhardy civilian leadership in the
modern history of the United States." (Newsweek) "A vacuum has opened up at the heart of world politics where US leadership ought to be found." (Financial Times) "The unpalatable truth is that the Bush administration has failed in almost everything it has touched."

The Historical Moment - MER Flashback Four Years (June 25, 2004)
MER FLASHBACK to 25 June 2001: Months before what is now known as "9/11" MER published these articles indicating that a major strike by Osama
Bin-Laden against the U.S. was imminent and that the Israelis were more determined than ever to subjugate the Palestinians. We wrote at the time: "In these conditions any spark can ignite the blaze; and sometimes such giant fires consume more than was originally anticipated, sometimes even those who start them."

It's Now the Second Half of 1948 (June 23, 2004)
As always Professor Tanya Reinhart from Tel Aviv University writes with extraordinary insight.
"...the Israeli military and political leadership are aiming, eventually, at a total destruction of the Palestinian authority, and, with it, the process of Oslo, which is now dominantly considered by them a 'historical mistake'."

Information Warfare - Israel Wins Big (June 22, 2004)
For 10 years Tim Llewellyn was the BBC's Middle East correspondent. In this passionately argued polemic he accuses British broadcasters, including his former employer, of systematic bias in covering the Arab-Israeli conflict, giving undue prominence to the views of the Israelis while all but disregarding the roots of the crisis and what is being done to the Palestinians.

Gearing Up for IRAN and North Korea (June 21, 2004)
"...waiting to confront Iraq would have allowed the
United States to confront more immediate dangers....
Because our military is stretched so thin in Iraq, we cannot threaten military action in Iran or North Korea." Martin Peretz and The New Republic

Crusade II - Reagan first brought the neocons to power (June 09, 2004) Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Bush...and the list goes on. Those who have recently led the crusade to invade Iraq, subjugate the Palestinians, and fight Islam, were brought to power in Washington for the first time some 23 years ago when Ronald Reagan of the once far-right was victorious over Jimmy Carter of the once mid-left in American politics. And some now forget that the man who greatly helped bring Ronald Reagan to power was none other than George Herbert Walker Bush, former head of the CIA, who now became Vice-President for the next eight years and then himself succeeded Reagan as President in 1989.

Realities of the "Reagan Plan" for the Middle East (June 06, 2004) The seeds for the Intifada and for Israel's increasingly aggressive escalating occupation of and dispossession of the Palestinian people were sown in the years of the Reagan Presidency. Indeed it was Ronald Reagan who first brought what we today call the "neocons" to power in Washington, and the right-wing Republicans who forged such a close alliance with the Israeli Likud of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon which had come to power in Israel in 1977 for the first time.